Medical diagnostic facilities, including clinics, hospitals, outpatient institutions, and departments within these organizations often dispose of an array of diagnostic systems. By way of example, a clinic or hospital may include a variety of medical diagnostic imaging systems in a radiology department, or in several radiology departments. Clinics and outlying or satellite offices may include additional equipment, both stationary and mobile. Such imaging systems may typically including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, computed tomography (CT) systems, x-ray systems, ultrasound systems, positron emission tomography (PET) systems, and so forth. Additional diagnostic systems may include various types of monitors, electronic examination or diagnostic tools, and so forth.
Due to the extremely demanding schedules and to the relative complexity of such systems and equipment, facilities typically contract for their oversight and maintenance with outside service providers. In a traditional servicing approach, a field service engineer physically visits a facility and review the state of operation of the systems, noting any potential problems, and ordering any necessary servicing to maintain the equipment in good operating condition. Such field engineer visits are also useful for upgrading equipment, including both physical upgrades and software upgrades. The field engineer, or other specialized personnel, may also visit the facilities to provide training or to answer questions regarding the proper configuration and operation of the equipment.
While conventional field service engineer visits are extremely useful in addressing specific needs as they occur, the remote servicing of medical diagnostic systems has been streamlined by networking the systems to a remote service provider. In one known approach, for example, individual diagnostic systems may be connected via an open or proprietary network to a remote service provider. The connection may be established at the initiation of the diagnostic system, or by the service provider, via conventional network technologies. Data required for providing the service, analyzing potential or existing problems, and so forth, is transmitted via the network connection. Moreover, service requests, and feedback on such requests, may be similarly transmitted via the network.
Networked remote servicing of medical diagnostic systems has proven extremely effective and will gain increasing acceptance in the future. However, such techniques are not without drawbacks. For example, a very substantial user base exists of systems which are not equipped for connectivity to an external network. In general, current technologies include the use of various types of modems for two-way data communication. However, where no such modem or similar circuitry is provided, a system may simply be unable to transmit or receive data for remote servicing. Moreover, where subscribing systems do include modems or other communications interfaces, separate connections and data transmission sessions are typically required for each of the systems, due to their independent management and to the overall topology of the remote service data exchange.
Another drawback of existing remote servicing techniques for medical diagnostic systems is the relatively limited coordination between the servicing and the internal or external reporting and accounting functions. Where individual diagnostic systems contact or are contacted by a remote service provider, for example, the remote service provider typically maintains data logs and accounting records for reporting back to the institution or facility to summarize service or maintenance activities. However, the institution itself may not be capable of, or may not efficiently maintain such records due to the independent contacts between the medical diagnostic systems and the remote service provider.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved technique for rendering service via a remote service connection to medical diagnostic systems. There is a particular need for a technique which will provide interactive exchange of data, requests, reports, and so forth, while reducing the number of separate connections needed, as well as the overhead of infrastructure required to formulate and transmit the data.